Lords and Ladies

arrangement of branches and a strip of his robe caught on one of them, but she did have a quality that in anyone not wearing a battered pointy hat and an antique black dress might have been called poise. Absolute poise. It would be hard to imagine her making an awkward movement unless she wanted to.
    He’d seen that years ago, although of course at the time he’d just been amazed at the way her shape fitted perfectly into the space around it. And—
    He’d got caught up again .
    “Wait a minute!”
    “Entirely the wrong sort of clothes for the country!”
    “I wasn’t expecting a hike through the woods! This is a ceremonial damn costume!”
    “Take it off, then.”
    “Then how will anyone know I’m a wizard?”
    “I’ll be sure to tell them!”
    Granny Weatherwax was getting rattled. She was also, despite everything that she’d said, getting lost. But the point was that you couldn’t get lost between the weir at the bottom of the Lancre rapids and Lancre town itself. It was uphill all the way. Besides, she’d walked through the local forests all her life. They were her forests.
    She was pretty sure they’d passed the same tree twice. There was a bit of Ridcully’s robe hanging on it.
    It was like getting lost in her own garden.
    She was also sure she’d seen the unicorn a couple of times. It was tracking them. She’d tried to get into its mind. She might as well have tried to climb an ice wall.
    It wasn’t as if her own mind was tranquil. But now at least she knew she was sane.
    When the walls between the universes are thin, when the parallel strands of If bunch together to pass through the Now, then certain things leak across. Tiny signals, perhaps, but audible to a receiver skilled enough.
    In her head were the faint, insistent thoughts of a thousand Esme Weatherwaxes.

    Magrat wasn’t sure what to pack. Most of her original clothes seemed to have evaporated since she’d been in the castle, and it was hardly good manners to take the ones Verence had bought for her. The same applied to the engagement ring. She wasn’t sure if you were allowed to keep it.
    She glared at herself in the mirror.
    She’d have to stop thinking like this. She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered . And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered.
    She’d stick the, the, the damn letter on the mirror, so they’d all know why she’d gone.
    She’d a damn good mind to go off to one of the cities and become a courtesan.
    Whatever that was.
    And then she heard the singing.
    It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sound Magrat had ever heard. It flowed straight through the ears and into the hindbrain, into the blood, into the bone…
    A silk camisole dropped from her fingers on to the floor.
    She wrenched at the door, and a tiny part of her mind still capable of rational thought remembered about the key.
    The song filled the passageway. She gripped some folds of the wedding dress to make running easier and hurried toward the stairs…
    Something bulleted out of another doorway and bore her to the floor.
    It was Shawn Ogg. Through the chromatic haze she could see his worried face peering out from its hood of rusty—
    —iron.
    The song changed while staying the same. The complex harmonies, the fascinating rhythm did not alter but suddenly grated, as if she was hearing the song through different ears.
    She was dragged into the doorway.
    “Are you all right, Miss Queen?”
    “What’s happening?”
    “Dunno, Miss Queen. But I think we’ve got elves.”
    “Elves?”
    “And they’ve got Miss Tockley. Um. You know you took the iron away—”
    “What are you talking about, Shawn?”
    Shawn’s face was white.
    “That one down the dungeons started singing, and they’d put their mark on her, so she’s doing what they want—”
    “Shawn!”
    “And Mum said they don’t kill you, if they can help it. Not right away. You’re much more fun if you’re not dead.”
    Magrat stared at him.
    “I had to run away! She was trying to get my hood off! I had to leave her, miss! You understand, miss?”
    “Elves?”
    “You got to hold on to something iron, miss! They hate iron!”
    She slapped his face, hurting her fingers on the mail.
    “You’re gabbling, Shawn!”
    “They’re out there, miss! I heard the drawbridge go down! They’re out there and